Tour of Italy – 7th Birthday Party

I recently realized that I had delayed posting about my son’s 7th birthday party for so long that I completely forgot about it! I had a lot of fun working through the party details and wanted to share!

Every year we choose Jack’s birthday theme based on his primary interest throughout that year. 2014 was more or less all about Italy since that was where we spent our summer vacation, visiting family and a lot of the country’s famous landmarks, so that seemed to be the right direction for this year and Jack completely agreed.

More than previous years, Jack was very interested in the party planning and it was wonderful to see his creative mind at work. Our big idea was the tour of Italy and along with that went Pizza & Gelato!

The invitation. It included a reply card and plane ticket/boarding pass which guests had to bring to pass through ‘security’.

Jack wanted to set the kids table outside and took it very seriously.

After going through security the tourists were invited to wait for Flight #07 at Gate 777 where there were coloring pages and some blocks with which they were challenged to build the leaning tower of Pisa and/or the Colosseum.

The food. My first thought – make my own little personal pizzas like you’d find in an Italian pizzeria but after realizing the time constraints of baking pies for about 35 guests in my one oven I opted for purchasing extra larges from a Palace Pizza, our local, authentic pizzeria. (note: the Italia watercolor drawing in the background was done by David many years ago and hangs on our living room wall. Use what ya got!)

The games. The kids were outside most of the time and having a blast just playing. We didn’t have a ton of games and unfortunately I didn’t get any snapshots of the ones we did but my husband led them on relays and races through the ‘Colosseum’ and fun adventures through places like Pompeii and Venice!

Dessert! The cake was kind of a bust but the featured dessert was Gelato and I churned several different flavors including strawberry, vanilla, chocolate and my favorite, caffé. Each was served in typical Italian fashion in a ‘cuppetto’ with a small shovel topped with a pizzelle or waffle cookie wedge. Other sweet snacks included biscotti and cream puffs.

The favors. Gelato topped pens, gelato shooters, roman soldier, sugar cookies in the shape of gelato balls, italian candies and an airline packet of peanuts. (we had no one with allergies so I knew it would be safe to have these.) And the kids took home their soccer ball drinking cups from earlier in the party.

Jack he had a wonderful 7th birthday. Many thanks to Jack’s grandparents and to all the guests who pitched in to keep things running smoothly and gave Jack such wonderful gifts and memories.

Grazie e Arrivederci!